Screening room

In case you haven’t heard, it’s a blast to be an international superstar.

If you’re Angelina Jolie, you can getthe financing to direct “In the Land of Blood and Honey,” a love storyset against the backdrop of the Bosnian war, featuring such major boxoffice magnets as Goran Kostic, Zana Marjanovic and Dolya Gavanski.(Well, perhaps they’re box office magnets somewhere.)

What about Madonna, whose cinematic luckhas been questionable at best in the more than 25 years since“Desperately Seeking Susan” helped burnish her superstar credentials?Although her first directorial effort, “Filth and Wisdom,” sank withouta trace in 2008, she was able to secure a sizable budget for herfollow-up, “W.E.,” a romantic fantasia involving a modern-day woman(Abbie Cornish) obsessed with the scandalous affair between Americandivorcee Wallis Simpson and King Edward VIII. Reviews so far have beenmixed at best, but that shouldn’t spell any sort of serious trouble forMadonna the next time she feels like stepping behind the camera: Hername remains bankable, simply because anything she works on is likelyto get considerable attention.

The same is true of Johnny Depp. Onceone of the most consistently adventurous actors around — in the spaceof a few months in 1990, he launched his movie career by playing thetitle roles in John Waters’ demented 1950s teen musical “Cry-Baby” anddirector Tim Burton’s satiric fairy tale “Edward Scissorhands” — Deppfinally hit serious pay dirt with his portrayal of swishy swashbucklerCaptain Jack Sparrow in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” films. Sincethen, he’s been content to more or less play it safe, headliningseveral profitable Burton remakes (“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,”“Alice in Wonderland”) and starring in glossy showcases like theempty-headed, eye-filling “The Tourist.”

But for years, Depp dreamed of bringingHunter S. Thompson’s semi-autobiographical early novel “The Rum Diary”to the screen. Depp’s earlier Thompson-inspired movie, director TerryGilliam’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” was a box office disasterin 1998, grossing less than $11 million; it’s built up a loyalfollowing in the years since.

Perhaps the cult cache of “Vegas” andthe fact that Depp is usually catnip for moviegoers inspired enoughinvestors to sink their money into “Rum.” They would have been betteroff gambling on Captain Morgan than Captain Jack, however: “Rum,” inwhich Depp plays a hard-boozing journalist in 1960 Puerto Rico, bombedat theaters last weekend, selling only $5 million worth of tickets (apitiful average of barely $2,200 per location). 

It’s obvious that although moviegoersadore Depp, they won’t automatically line up for anything he’s in.Second, unless your movie has “Hangover” somewhere in the title, it’stough to sell a comedy that relies heavily on the questionable appealof drunken, debauched guys on a spree. Third, we now know for certainthat Hunter S. Thompson is a name that’s marketable in bookstores, notin cinemas.

The $45 million film was shot two yearsago — always a warning sign — and had been in limbo ever since, waitingfor distribution. It’s likely that FilmDistrict, which previouslyhandled “Insidious” and “Soul Surfer,” regrets giving “Rum” a shot.

If Depp wants some consolation, he canalways turn to Bill Murray’s “The Razor’s Edge,” another superstar petproject that was a far worse film (and an even bigger bust) than “Rum.”